#WoDWednesday: a true fae, Haggard, the Keeper in the Carrion Coat (Changeling the Lost)

He's a gaunt figure, dressed in sodden and bedraggled finery. His hair is long and gray. His eyes: gray. His flesh: gray. His hollow cheeks have more shadow than substance, and that face has never been seen to smile. When he goes out, he wears a coat made of patchwork, human skins sewn together in a sick imitation of a Victorian greatcoat. Sometimes, his right hand is a hook. More often, he carries a gaff hook in hand or in belt.

To be held in durance to Haggard is to be held in a dreary, humourless exile from light, laughter and color. His livery and house colors are grey. He lives in a castle, ramshackle and broken down, on a rough pile of rocks in the ocean, right at the end of where Jax Beach Pier is in the mortal world. In Haggard's realm, which encompasses many miles of docks and shipyards, the sky is always deeply clouded, and it is usually raining. Frequent thunder rolls, but the lightning illuminates little. There is a shoal, behind the castle, a nasty little sandbar island covered with detritus and rusty cages which spill over into the water and deep into the ocean itself. The cages come in every variety, but most seem like traps for fish and crabs. What writhes in them, unable to escape, however, are human souls. Flesh eating crabs teem over the cages, taking nips from those immured within.

All those who have served Haggard have spent their time in the soul cages. What's worse is that all those who have escaped agree on one sickening truth: they left behind the best parts of themselves to escape. They left their own souls, screaming and pleading, trapped in the soul cages, to seize what little freedom a soulless life could provide. There was nothing they could do.

Changelings belonging to Haggard look forward to being sent away on missions...missions they cannot usually conceive of escaping during, at least partially due to their souls incarceration in the cages...but it is during these times away that the changeling might feel, for a little while, warm, and dry. And seeing color can be a bit of a shock, as well.

A changeling immured in the soul cages (or temporarily reunited with their soul, which stays there, according to Haggard) cannot breathe, their lungs filled with water, whether on land or in the ocean, but they cannot drown, either. Haggard's minions might be sent to the cages as punishment, or as a sick reward.

Many changelings report having been giving the duty of feeding the Red Bull. Sometimes, this meant being the Bull's food. Sometimes, it meant giving him other Changelings. Either way, the beast devoured their screams and terror as much as their flesh, and though the changeling rose again, the pain and fear seemed to nourish the Bull quite well. The bull, by the way is sometimes a massive crimson Minotaur, at others a huge red bull, and sometimes, it is even a man. The man looks mostly American Indian, and actually looks sad...but it is the Bull that hunts down escaping changelings and returns them to Haggard's tender mercies.

Haggard uses changelings for castle staff, tenders for the soul cages, fishermen, dock workers, as fish herds for his undersea flocks, as hunters and assassins, as archivists and consorts, torturers and more. Any seeming might be born here, but Darklings and aquatic types are particularly common. Fairest are most uncommon. He seems to have an antipathy for the beautiful.

Changelings in his realm find their emotions (other than fear) to be dampened, their durance to be particularly depressing.

Rumour has it that Haggard cannot resist a wager, and that he has sworn a vow (perhaps a Contract?) never to love.

His wine is fabled and feared, loved and wanted by even mortal vampires, for it sates their hunger and gives them power:

"'I have here a cask of most magical wine

A vintage that blessed every ship in the line

It's wrung from the blood of the sailors who died

Young white bodies adrift in the tide"

His Titles:

Haggard

King of the Sea

The Fisherman

King of the Ninth World

Son of the Fog Bell's Toll

Keeper in the Carrion Coat

Lord of the Soul Cages